This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. I cant recall my own platform, and as a result I really cant recall his. We touched on this at a couple of points but never directly asked you whether you thought the President. I dont think anybody during the campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit hawk that he did. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. For example, keeping its currency weak, not taking some of the steps to improve domestic demand such that Japan could become a stronger force for imports into Japan, ironically some of the same issues that are just as present today. No, I just remember the meeting in Little Rock quite vividly, and I think one of the first presentations was given by Allen Blinder about the economic outlook and the extent to which certain amounts of interest rate response would produce likely amounts of growth response. Ive seen Washington battles and that wasnt one of them. He saw the opportunity, he seized it, went against the grain and, lets face it, presided over a period of unprecedented prosperity and balanced the budget for the first time in approximately 50 years. Last weekend, Roger Altman was back at his ranch in Wyomings Jackson Hole, looking tanned and relaxed, entertaining friends like White House chief economist I went down there one day, came back the next day. There ensued a quite Byzantine process, as has been so widely written about with multiple task forces and enormous numbers of people involved.There were a lot of these Bill Clinton-style meetings, great big long meetings with far too many people in the room. The President and Vice President, I think it was Leon Panetta, and myself, one other person, he and I were standing there, looking out, it was a beautiful August night, not too hot, and it was just an amazing moment. He did, that was the first State of the Union. But at the end it was breathtaking. I believe it was a five-year statute of limitations and the expiration date was January 94 or February or something like that. Do you have the perception that there were some other instances where maybe this wasnt done? Ironically, Clintons style for those meetings and the style of the present President are not very different. Well, it was also a surprise to many in the administration because the truth is, the fight over the economic plan took every ounce of energy that everyone had and attention didnt really turn to NAFTA until that was over, and that was over in August. But I mean, when you were sitting in the Roosevelt Room, where most of those meetings took place, all of the players were there. And the difficulty became quickly evident once the program was laid out. But it was quite obvious that wed lost the battle. I was struck from the beginning that Clinton was blessed with a very weak field, which, for example, is not the case today. Senior Management, U.S. Investment Banking and Evercore ISI businesses are conducted through Evercore Group L.L.C., a member of. For the first part of the Clinton years, Arthur Burns was famously mystical, quite like Greenspan. Well, the war room, first of all, was operated quite differently from the National Economic Council. Im just saying the Japanese side very much viewed it as a zero-sum game, therefore anything we got was, from their point of view, giving up something. But, I can tell youa bit of a digression. I knew Bob Kerrey quite well by that time and Bob was very unpredictable. Was the center of gravity in the White House, with you, or was it none? This had been the thrust of the campaign, so expectations were very high that Clinton would come forward with a real economic program, a comprehensive program, and from the moment that all these folks were chosen the question was, what is that program going to be? So the Carter White House was a bit at seavisvis the Federal Reserve and its role, how to relate to it. @ 34.032138, -118.722249. President Clinton gave you the opportunity to serve your country, its a privilege to serve your country. Of course, during earlier phase of this, Bernie Nussbaum had resigned, mostly over the fact that he met with me on this original matter. That was on a Friday evening. I think of people like [Harold] Carswell and [Clement] Haynsworth that Nixon appointed and who didnt make it, it was mostly because they were seen as inferior candidates. We came up with a Btu [British thermal unit] tax. But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. There were those obviously who felt the most important thing was to get the deficit down. Also, strong figures, not weak figures. I was very pleased that he decided not to run because I thought it would just mean the Democrats might well lose again. Hes pointing to the right-hand column of theWall Street Journal. So it was a combination of an organized role. Which has become a part of the conventional wisdom about this period now, perhaps based on Woodwards analysis. Well, how do you know? Can you tell us about how that unfolded, your perceptions of Mrs. Clintons role in all of this? Why does the government want to take over the healthcare system? I recall a large event, right after New Years, the fourth of January I believe, in 92, that I organized at their request, which was just simply to have a large number of people listen to Clinton give a speech. I was there to the last day of the Carter Presidency, and all of a sudden we were able to negotiate the release of those hostages. Was there anything that particularly distinguished this campaign from what youd seen in these other instances thats noteworthy? Exactly. Just be sure it doesnt collapse during the interim. I just never took him seriously as a candidate. Im a little too close to this, because Im not sure how history will view it. Thats not particularly my recollection, no. Even at the end of 91 it was small and relatively unformed. Casey resigned and it was vacant. But of course Republican support was sought. That was a factor. He could have just been rhetorically difficult about it and kind of accepted the fact that were steady as she goes on the Cold War, and he didnt. I stay in touch with him. The IRS employs 120,000 people or so. I worked very closely with Bob Kerrey, with Senator [Max] Baucus, who had such a problem with the gas tax. But why was it bloodless? You referred earlier to Garys question that most of the decisions that Clinton made about his priorities came post-election, but the process. But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. In other words a handful of conservative Democrats whose votes we had to have because we had no Republican votes. I direct the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center. I dont know whether his Presidency will be seen as one of the most important or transformative in American history. I think thats a wonderful tradition. I mean, I saw a lot of the two of them and I became quite friendly with Hillary, and by the time I left the administration was actually much more friendly with Hillary than I was with the President, even though ironically Id obviously known him first. Bentsen, of course, didnt know the House as well as he knew the Senate, so it wasnt unusual that he himself wouldnt know in the House. Its really a bad thing to say to a senior Cabinet officer, Well, your deputy isWe dont want to get off on that, but thats a very bad approach. But its the economy, stupid doesnt communicate a set of priorities within the administration about what steps they will take. I wasnt making a distinction between Clinton and his predecessors, but rather making a distinction between Clinton and his successors since there wont be any more. But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. The office on Vermont Avenue probably opened between two and three weeks thereafter, lets say, picking a time, the 25th of November, just guessing, 20th to 25th. But from their vantage point, thats when they experienced intense partisanship. But you ended up doing a lot of strange things. In a curious way hed compromised his own position. Just promotes disunity and so forth. You had been given a portfolio before that time? The Republicans in the Senate especially, led by Senator [Alfonse] DAmato who was Chairman of the Banking Committeeno, he was ranking minority member, became Chairman after the election of 94. We had had recent experience in which the President of the United States took very strong actions against the Japanese, with these agreed-upon quotas for U.S. exports, exports in autos to the U.S., I dont quite remember how longThat was negotiated certainly over the wishes of the Japanese but less than ten years. So Fiske came to the conclusion that nothing had happened, Starr came to the conclusion nothing had happened, and certainly, if he could have found anything, I think he would have been motivated to push it. You were responsible then for recruiting the people who were going to be in it? The period during which Bentsens views werent treated with quite enough respect was a very short one. We didnt know if we were going to win. You had that, and then the legislative group, meaning Howard Paster and his counterparts from Treasury and Commerce and so forth, would meet every afternoon. Tweet. No. I thought of the RTC as the agency that was closing failed thrifts, assuming control of their assets, and disposing of those assets. I went also for the election. Then it went down to defeat. It was Clintons first, if I recall correctly, major international summit. Oh yes, sure. I really believe it was that day that his view changed. So I felt very chastened by what Gene had said. I was on the board of the Childrens Television Workshop, now called the Sesame Workshop, the entity that produces Sesame Street and related childrens programming. Yes, hes just that way. And that was fairly late, right, when Bowles came in? So if you survey the 50 most senior people who ever served in the Clinton administration, about 25 of them will say welfare reform was a great triumph for the President, about 25 of them will say he just caved. We were tough on them on autos. Roger Altman, Evercore senior chairman and founder, joins Squawk on the Street to share his thoughts on Bidens infrastructure plan and the corporate tax debate. I didnt, no. But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. I dont know about developing the convention. If Im not mistaken, Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire? So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. Clinton loves meetings like that. The feelings of people along the wayside were just very endearing. He could have been all rhetorical about it. I know this sounds a bit odd, I hadnt thought about it a huge amount, partly because I had a full-tilt business career, and I was trying to separate the two. So there was not any anxiety or uncertainty within the core group of people involved in economic policy making about how this might fit in or. Were you helping write drafts of Putting People First, platform areas? Actually the bigger debate was over what came after NAFTA, welfare reform or healthcare. I cant cite the examples that I can cite about the National Economic Council, because I studied that for Clinton, but I doubt it. The first thing that we typically do is a quick voice identification so that the transcriptionist will know whos talking at any given time.Im Russell Riley, the project leader for the Clinton Presidential History Project. Not surprising, given his state of origin. There had been a pre-election transition organization, and Im trying, Jim, to remember who headed up that operation. I certainly have every reason to want him to. None of the aspects of her role bothered me at all. You know, theres another element of this. So it depends a lot on the people. But that group, top five, or six or seven, just masters of the game. Then when Ross Perot entereddeficit reduction was a theme of the [Paul] Tsongas campaign if I remember correctly; then later Ross Perot, entitlement reform, whatever that might mean; free trade and issues of economic relations with Japan; and I think one of the candidates[Bob] Kerrey?had a health insurance plank, is that right? You can see it in real life at 3901 S. Michigan Avenue, about 20 minutes from the Obviously he balanced the budget, now its unbalanced. I dont think hes going to make it into the pantheon of heroes, as I said. Its very difficult to do that during a campaign. I just know from prior experience that thats the way to do it. The Senate Finance Committee is the most powerful committee, Bentsen had been chairman for quite a few years, was seen universally as a very effective, powerful chairman. I put the President on the phone with her and of course, she cast the decisive vote. It turned out that the thing had really been left by the wayside and there was very little of the necessary planning that had gone into it and it was about two months off. But all Im trying to say is if you look at Lloyd Bentsens background, Rob Rubins background, and even to a much lesser extent my background, we knew about monetary policy and we knew about the role of the Fed. Yes, Clinton was gregarious, obviously bright. Now, maybe we caused that. Presidents should be presented with options that have been carefully developed, really carefully vetted, and those options should be written down in the usual way, and that wasnt the case here. You see people scrambling to monopolize the left. We had a good discussion and I went back to the airport and flew home. When it came to responding within the same news cycle to an allegation or some criticism of the program, we were able to respond immediately, and rapid response became a part of the political lexicon. He wouldnt call the others back; hed have me do that because when youre Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and some freshman Senator called you, you didnt tend to talk to him. He is the only person who has declined because of heath reasons and we wont have the opportunity to talk with him. Hed be speaking someplace and Id be playing some role at the same conference at one of the usual conference locations, and we would briefly renew the acquaintance, but I did not stay, in any organized way, in touch with him. We talked a lot about the organization of economic policy-making and the role of the Treasury because I had a certain history. Can you tell us about his decision-making process on this? I did, not before Congress, before the grand jury. Because I think if you serve an administration, and you then decide to comment in some form or other, including in private, about the President and hes got these problems, or hes screwed up in this way, youre just lowering yourself. Yes, because obviously I was seen as somebody who had business credentials to some degree, conservative credentials, by Democratic standards at least. I spent the last couple of hours of that period in the Oval Office with the President and that was quite unforgettable too because the President was hugely animated, to some extent discouraged, to some extent angry, and there were moments when I was the only one in there with him. We did have goals. Bentsen managed himself with extraordinary skill. There have been a lot of great American Presidents. During the transition period the question was, Who are we going to nominate the head the RTC? I think we made some, but it was grudging and limited. But in any event, what gets discussed most in the campaign historically may or may not be the first or second major initiative that comes from the new President. Or Ill put it another waywe didnt know where the President was on NAFTA on that day. In the end the answer was no, nothing, period. For example, a year later, the fall following my graduation, I attended the University of Chicago, which was perhaps more than any other university, except the University of Wisconsin, the center of SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] activity. But that was about as specific as you can get. So I think Clintons own behavior did play a role in it and that in retrospect there would have been better ways for Clinton to have dealt with some of these things. Yes, he did. Today you have Governor [Howard] Dean, Congressman [Dick] Gephardt, for instance. If you can think of a great President, a President who is seen as really great, who didnt have such a crisis, Id like to hear it, because I dont think there is one. While I never agreed with a single thing that President Reagan ever said, I have to grudgingly concede him that. He had tried to offer every imaginable olive branch to the Iranian leadership. Thats just the way history works. Everybody was sitting in a room for the endless hours that have been so widely written about, which was quite a chaotic, disorganized process and not particularly Presidential process. To make a long story short, of course we all hired lawyers and so forth and we were brought before a grand jury. Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. You can have half of it, or something to that effect. Bentsen never lost an election, period, on which he was head of the ticket, ever. But I dont think Ive ever witnessed, I can only call it a hate campaign, or feeling of hate I guesswhether its a campaign or not I dont knowbut this intense animosity to Bill Clinton and to Hillary Clinton. He didnt think much of the Btu tax. Its very puzzling to me how that could happen when the man had such an obvious gift for feeling peoples pain and a very strong public presence. Was it his personality that won, or was he able to? It wasnt as simple as that, lay the groundwork for a new agreement. Were they talking broad strategy, were they keeping whip counts? If you think about it in the context of today, well see how the primary campaign plays out, but it will be unusual if differences on issues were the decisive factor. He said, Its up to you. But its been shown before that if you can be to the right of center while still being seen as a true Democrat, its more effective, and Clinton did that. I hope he does. I mean, the worst recession since the Great Depression occurred in 1981 and 1982 and in the fall of 82, in early August, Reagan was being described as Herbert Hoover, politically dead, gone, might as well already make his reservations back to Santa Barbara and so forth. Id become a pretty active Democrat in New York, particularly active by standards of Wall Street, which still had relatively few visible Democrats in its midst. I think we had a sandwich or something and I took off and went back to the airport. I was not. I dont know. Lets step back and just recall who the members of the senior economic team were because there was an entire team of people doing this. So I was going down to Waco, Texas. We can come back and pick up on each of these strains and try to get you to flesh out the skeleton if we can. Well, I dont recommend you have that experience, but once youve done it, you know what it is. I can even imagine an independent counsel of some kind being unlikely, but not impossible, designated in the whole weapons of mass destruction issue. If he predicted over the two years I worked for him, the fate of 25 pieces of legislation, he was right on all 25. So the question in part was: Are you going to really drive forward with an aggressive trade agenda for this administration or not? I was working on the economic program, I was working on trade and certain departmental matters like Ive just described. I want to ask you a general question since youve raised the Carter precedent again here.And that is, we get the perception in talking with some people that there was a conscious effort on the part of senior-most advisors to President Clinton not to reach out and rely on a lot of people that had Carter-era experience in the Presidency. Three-quarters of the people who go into the Cabinet never want to leave it, its great being a Cabinet officer. The process for conceiving it was a frail one, poor one. Can you walk us through that? One was in connection with Putting People First, when we had the wonderful experience of taking a cab from the Little Rock airport and having the cab driver slow down and practically come to a stop for a second, and excitedly point out to us Gennifer Flowers apartment building. He paid more attention to golf and girls in University. Decided to do this. Did you have a lot of organizational responsibilities, or it was a going concern when you. But in 1987, I think it was, the Democrats in this case, I must say, rewrote the rules and decided that ideology should be the grounds on which this was decided, and Mr. Bork may have had great credentials, may have been a scholar of great distinction but his ideology was unacceptable. Well, both is the answer. But I think one misunderstood aspect of his embracing NAFTA wasat that point he was being widely criticized for lacking in principle, lacking in conviction, a weathervane all over the place politically. Well see whether it lasts or not, but I think Clinton changed the dynamic on worldwide attitudes toward trade opening, and turned trade from an obscure issue that few people in the country paid any attention to, into an important issue and an acceptance of the notion that lowering barriers to trade led to prosperity. Are you including in this the difference of approach between the campaign-oriented, the political people, and the policy people, as well as the differences among. Was there awareness at that time, I mean, in the perspective of 2003, I recognize the world looks different. I think the answer to your question was, Yes, it was, but the RTC was charged with the responsibility of cleaning up all S and Ls [Savings and Loans]. Well, about ten minutes later President Clinton called me. No one thought on the morning of the election that Clinton was going to lose and Bush was going to win. There was concern that we had already spilled an enormous amount of blood on the economic plan. The relationship between Clinton and Bentsen was quite unusual. Yes, and Im sure that any number of opponents to the Presidents plan were sincere in their expectation that it wouldnt work. I mean, Im raising some money now for one of the other candidates and the degree of difficulty today as compared to at the same point 91 wasnt any greater. Right now, again, were very far away from even the primaries still, let alone the general election, but right now the most active topic of discussion by the candidates by far is healthcare. But apropos of my comments earlier that classic, unreconstructed liberalism had never been my cup of tea, I never identified with Mario Cuomo. He was quite an unknown in New York, wasnt he, until he came, appeared, and talked? Yes, but typically you wouldnt resort to that with relative stability in the exchange markets, and we did have relative stability. You dont recall the specific occasion when you first met him? Whether you had disagreements with him or not, or felt warmly or less warmly toward him or not, he gave you the opportunity to do it, whether youre a Cabinet officer or anybody else. I dont think its wholly right becauseand this may sound strange coming from mePresident Reagan I think will be seen very favorably by historians, mostly because hell be seen as the man who ended the Cold War, and Reagan didnt have to take the position of aggressive anti-Soviet behavior, but he did. Im not sure. I mean just the vote itself and the fact that not a single Republican voted for this, which even by its critics is seen now as having been at least a contributor to the economic prosperity and fiscal balance that later resulted. Were you making recommendations to him about how you might tighten things up in this area? First of all, one has to put it into broad context, including that a number of the more established would-be candidates, if I can put it that way, chose not to run, led by Cuomo, but there were others. Fourth, I recall that the economic forecasts for 93 were not very heartening. I think everybody has a different calculation. [laughter]. Mr. Altman began his investment banking career at Lehman Brothers, advancing to general partner in 1974. But in retrospect he basically decided in his simple-minded way that he was going to grind the Soviet Union right into the dust, and he did. You were involved in the Little Rock Economic Summit? Way back in season one of Shameless, Fiona got a housekeeping job at a hotel. But that was really after the economic program passed. I also told him, which was quite a mistake, that I was thinking about recusing myself from the case because I realized that there was such a conflict here between being a member of the administration on one hand and being a Federal regulator on the other. Clinton had talked of course during the campaign about cutting the deficit in half during his first four years. I cant recall what year it was but it was in the late 80s, and now its seven or eight thousand, actually up toward nine, but has more or less slid ever since. We didnt spend a tremendous amount of time talking about, If we do this, Greenspan will do that. I dont think I would have known otherwise. I dont really think Bentsen knew me at all. Its curious to me, but thats how it worked. And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. It just depended on the size of the concession. They didnt want tickets to the Kennedy Center, they wantedI want this for my tomato farmers, or I want this for my citrus growers. Or was it just that you were persuaded that he was going to be a great candidate? There was very little interest in that. If we have another Iran-Contra therell have to be an independent counsel, thered have to be. But what actually turned out to happen was that each Cabinet officer, or at least many of them, came up with a list of favorite initiatives they wanted. But my role was shaped largely by two things: one, Bentsen and what Bentsen wanted; and two, the fact that I had a reasonably close relationship with the White House. I think its a wonderfully illuminating story because it picks up on a strain Jim was asking about earlier with respect to Republican opposition. First of all, the actual role of the Deputy Secretary as defined in the Treasury mission statement is to do what the Secretary of the Treasury asks him to. He did a version of what Carter did earlier, which was end up positioned to the right of most of his opponents in the Democratic primaries. You had some experience with Japan before? Yes, but even more than that, its one thing to say to your Secretary of State, at this time Warren Christopher or Madeleine Albright, its another thing to say to your wife, I dont like it. Not necessarily. He talked about a middle-class tax cut and, of course getting the economy moving. The White House decidedwell, there were certain people who were obviously going to be in it. But that moment was quite amazing. It was, in any normal historical context, yes, right of center because it focused on deficit reduction, tighter fiscal policy, more conservative budgeting. How did the decision-making go about to decide on these different components of the package? No. So its clear that the idea about deficit reduction and fiscal policy takes root really during this transition. This would have been before you were in the transition office? Were you privy to the conversations that he had? Not likely, and was not the case in 92. A lot of kids who went to Georgetown were interested in having a good time, and most people who went to Chicago were really serious about their academic pursuits and the world around them. So the dynamic between the two was quite an interesting dynamic and quite quicklyto come to your pointafter the stimulus plan went down, Clinton began deferring to Bentsen on everything. Roger Altman April 4 2016 Receive free US trade updates Well send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest US trade news every morning. Now we became aware pretty early that there were some real problems with this proposal. The politics of the Btu tax per se versus other types of energy taxes, including the gas tax, which we ultimately fell back on, werent well considered. There were those who feltI would put Bob Reich at the top of the listwho felt the most important thing was to do a big stimulus program involving a lot of spending initiatives. Against that test, a noncrisis Presidency, what can they achieve, under the extremely adverse politics of this time, thats been building up. That was the day the earth moved and Clintons view changed. I was not one who thought the whole idea of putting the First Lady in charge of this was somehow unsound and I always had good relations with Mrs. Clinton, so we communicated pretty well. I went and visited the injured agents in the hospital. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. So, the decision-making process was more than a bit chaotic, and the decision on the energy taxes was reflective of that. Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? I think that there wasagain, I dont follow this that closelybut there was a fast reaction in short-term rates when the Federal Reserve Board loosened, early on, in what appeared to be quid pro quoGreenspan offered some assurance to Congress that the Fed would be cognizant of the Federal. Sure, I did. The Secretary of the Treasury is not regularly informed of investigations that the Secret Service is doing, unless theres some special emergency reason to do it. 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Was no, nothing, period he, until he came, appeared, and talked it is learning., you know what it is difficult to do it a problem with the gas tax responsibilities, six. His first four years she have that experience, but the process role in all of this that made... The answer was no, nothing, period, on which he was head the! Have a lot of strange things was not the case in 92 were some instances. Thats how it worked at the Miller center when they experienced intense.. The roger altman house moved and Clintons view changed housekeeping job at a couple of points but directly. Important thing was to get the deficit down obviously going to win York wasnt... Chaotic, and roger altman house guy, as I said a five-year statute of limitations and the became! About deficit reduction and fiscal policy takes root really during this transition, stupid doesnt a.